Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (12 page)

           
Leaving, Rat Stone was out of a job.

           
Over the slowly rising screaming and
yelling from the protesters, the American airmen marched in front of the
reviewing stand, formed, into four groups of fifty, and were ordered to parade
rest by Colonel Krieg, acting as the parade adjutant general. Surrounding the
grassy mall were two sets of bleachers, where guests of the government and a
few American family members and embassy personnel watched with long faces the
lowering of the colors for the last time over Clark Air Base. Banks of
photographers, television cameras, and reporters were clustered all around the
reviewing stand to capture the ceremonies. While several network news companies
were on hand, no live broadcast of the ceremony was permitted. General Stone
had felt, and the Air Force concurred, that a live broadcast might cause
widespread demonstrations all across the country. That was also the reason no
high-level American politicians were on hand. The official transfer had been
made in the safety of
Washington
,
D.C.
, weeks ago.

           
President Mikaso stepped forward to
the podium as a taped trumpet call was played. The crowd began to cheer, and an
appreciative ripple of applause issued from the bleachers. When the music
stopped, Mikaso spoke in flawless English: “My friends and fellow Filipinos, we
are here to mark a historic end, and a historic beginning, in the relations
between the Republic of the
Philippines
and the
United States of America
. On this day of freedom and independence,
we also mark a significant milestone in the future of the
Philippines
.

           
“For over ninety years, we have
relied on the courage, the generosity, and the strength of the people of the
United States
for our security. Such an arrangement has
greatly benefited our country and all its people. For this, we will be
eternally grateful.

           
“But we have learned much over these
long years. We have studied the sacred values of democracy and justice, and we
have strived to become not just a dependency of our good friends in the
United States
, but a strong, trusted ally. We are here
today to celebrate an important final stage of that education, as the people of
the
Philippines
take the reins of authority of our national
security responsibilities. We are thankful for the help from our American
friends, and we gratefully recognize the sacrifices you have made to our
security and prosperity. With your guidance and with God’s help, we take the
first great step toward being a genuine world power. . . .”

           
Mikaso spoke eloquently for several
more minutes, and when he was done, appreciative applause made its way from the
bleachers all the way out beyond the wall, over the crowds.

           
The people clearly loved their
President.

           
But Teguina listened to the speech
and Mikaso’s praise for the
United States
with growing impatience and disgust. He
loathed the Americans and had always resented their presence. As for Mikaso, he
owed him nothing. He’d agreed to this hybrid coalition only after he’d realized
he didn’t have enough votes to win the presidency himself.

           
As taped music was played over the
PA system, Mikaso,

           
Stone, and, reluctantly, Teguina,
positioned themselves in front of a special set of three flagpoles behind the
reviewing stands.

           
An honor guard stepped onto the
stand and positioned themselves around the flagpoles. As Mikaso placed a hand
over his heart in tribute, the Philippine flag was lowered a few feet in
respect. Then, as “Retreat” was played, the American flag was raised to the top
of the staff, then slowly lowered.

           
“Why is our flag lowered?” Teguina
whispered, as if to himself. When no one paid him any attention, he raised his
voice: “I ask, why is the Philippine flag lowered first? I do not understand
...”

           
“Silence, Mr. Teguina,” Mikaso
whispered.

           
“Raise the Philippine flag back to
the top of the staff,” he said, his voice now carrying clearly over the music.
“It is disrespectful for any national flag to be lowered in such a way.”

           
“We are paying honor to the
Americans—”

           
“Bah!” Teguina spat. “They are
foreigners returning home, nothing more.” But he fell silent as the American
flag was lowered and the honor guard began folding it into the distinctive
triangle. When the flag was folded, the honor guard passed it to General Stone,
who stepped to Arturo Mikaso, saluted, and presented it to him.

           
“With thanks from a grateful nation,
Mr. President,” Stone said.

           
Mikaso smiled. “It will be kept in a
place of honor in the capital, General Stone, as a symbol of our friendship and
fidelity.”

           
“Thank you, sir.”

           
At that, the two men looked skyward
as a gentle roar of jet engines began to be heard.

           
Flying over the base and directly
down the mall over the reviewing stand were four flights of four F-4 Phantom
fighters, followed by a flight of three B-52 bombers, all no more than two
thousand feet above ground—and everyone could clearly see the twelve Harpoon
antiship missiles hanging off the wings of each B-52. The audience in the
bleachers applauded and cheered; the crowd outside the gate was restlessly
cheering and shouting at the impressive display.

           
But Daniel Teguina decided he had
had enough.

           
This . . . this American
love feast
was too much for a native
Filipino. He pushed past Stone and Mikaso and quickly lowered the Philippine
flag from its pole, unclipped it, and reattached it to the empty center pole
where the American flag had just been removed.

           
“What in God’s name are you doing,
Teguina?” Mikaso shouted over the roar of the planes.

           
Teguina ordered one of his
bodyguards to raise the Philippine flag. He turned, glaring at Stone, and said,
“We are not going to defer to Americans any longer. This is our land, our
skies, our country—and our flag!”

           
As the flag traveled up the pole,
Stone heard one of the most chilling sounds he’d ever experienced—the screams
of fury, anger and, ultimately, jubilation coming from the thousands outside
the gates. As the Philippine flag reached the top of the pole, the screams
reached a deafening, roaring crescendo.

           
Teguina and Stone stared long and
hard at each other, while President Mikaso began babbling apologies for his
First Vice President’s behavior.

           
Thus ended the American presence in
the
Philippines
.

           
After the ceremonies quickly ended,
Rat Stone made his way to the air terminal to supervise the final departure—he
still preferred not to call it an evacuation—of American military personnel
from Clark Air Base. He couldn’t shake the feeling deep in his gut that this
cessation of mutual defense arrangements had happened too quickly, too
abruptly. The skirmish just last week in the
Spratly
Islands
was still fresh in his mind. And so was the
look in Daniel Teguina’s eyes ... it chilled him to the bone.

           
No, Rat Stone decided, this would
not be the last time he would see the
Philippines
. . . .

           
The question was when.

High
Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
(HAWC),
Nevada

Monday, 13 June 1994, 0715
hours local

           
“Tell me this is a joke, sir,”
Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan said to Brigadier General John Ormack,
“and—with all due respect, of course—I’ll beat your face

           
John Ormack, the deputy commander of
the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center—nicknamed HAWC, the Air Force’s
secret flight-test research center that was a part of the Dreamland
complex—didn’t have to look at the wide grin on McLanahan’s face to know that
he wasn’t seriously threatening bodily harm to anyone. He could tell by
McLanahan’s voice, wavering with pure excitement, that the thirty-nine-year-old
radar navigator and flight-test project officer was genuinely thrilled. They
were standing in front of the newest, most high-tech aircraft in the world, the
B-2 stealth bomber. And best of all, for the next several months, this
B-2—nicknamed the “Black Knight”—belonged to him.

           
“No joke, Patrick,” Ormack said,
putting an arm around McLanahan’s broad shoulders. “Don’t ask me how he did it,
but General Elliott got one of the first B-2A test articles assigned to
Dreamland. That’s one nice thing about being director of HAWC—Elliott gets to
pull strings. This one has been stripped down quite a bit, but it’s a fully
operational model—this was the bomber that launched the first SRAM- II attack
missile a few months back.”

           
“But they just made the B-2
operational,” McLanahan pointed out. “They don’t have that many B-2s out there—
just one squadron, the 393rd, right?”

           
Ormack nodded.

           
“What are
we
doing with one?” McLanahan asked.

           
“Knowing Elliott, he put the squeeze
on Systems Command to begin more advanced weapons tests on the B-2, in case
they begin full-scale deployment. Air Force stopped deployment, as you know,
because of budget cutbacks—but, as we both know, General Elliott’s projects
aren’t under public scrutiny.”

           
Ormack went on. “He was pushing the
shift from nuclear to conventional warfighting strategy to Congress, just as
Air Force did. It was hard for the Air Force to sell the B-2 as a conventional
weapons platform—that is, until Elliott spoke up. He wants to turn this B-2
into another Megafortress—a flying battleship. The man managed to convince the
powers- that-be to let him use one for advanced testing.

           
“Of course we need a senior project
officer with bomber experience, experience on EB-series strategic-escort
concepts, and someone with a warped imagination and a real bulldog-type
attitude. Naturally, we thought of you.”

           
McLanahan was speechless, which made
Ormack smile even more. Ormack was an
Air
Force
Academy
graduate, medium height, rapidly graying
brown hair, lean and wiry, and although he was a command pilot with several
thousand hours’ flying time in dozens of different aircraft, he was more at
home in a laboratory, flight simulator, or in front of a computer console. All
of the young men he worked with were either quiet, studious engineers—everyone
called them “geeks” or “computer weenies”—or they were flashy, cocky,
swaggering test pilots full of attitude because they had been chosen above
99.99 percent of the rest of the free world’s aviators to work at HAWC.

           
McLanahan was neither.

           
He wasn’t an Academy grad, not an
engineer, not a test pilot. What McLanahan was was a six-foot blond with an air
of understated strength and power; a hardworking, intelligent, well-organized,
efficient aviator. The eldest son of Irish immigrants, McLanahan had been bom
in
New
York
but raised in
Sacramento
where he attended Air Force ROTC at
Cal
State
and received his commission in 1973. After
navigator training at Mather AFB in
Sacramento
he was assigned to the B-52s of the 320th
Bomb Wing there. After uprating to radar navigator, he was again assigned to
Mather Air Force Base.

           
Along the way, McLanahan became the
best radar bombardier in the
United States
, a fact demonstrated by long lines of
trophies he’d received in annual navigation and bombing exercises in his six
years as a B-52 crew member. His prowess with the forty-year-old bomber,
lovingly nicknamed the BUFF (for Big Ugly Fat Fucker) or StratoPig, had
attracted the attention of HAWC’s commanding officer, Air Force Lieutenant
General Brad Elliott, who had brought him to the desert test ranges of Nevada
to develop a “Megafortress,” a highly modified B-52 used to flight-test
high-tech weapons and stealth hardware. Through an unlikely but terrifying
chain of events, McLanahan had taken the Megafortress, idiomatically nicknamed
the Old Dog, and its ragtag engineer crew into the
Soviet Union
to destroy a renegade ground-based
antisatellite laser site.